Joy was an llama that was always sleepy. Sleepy in the rain, sleepy in the sun, sleepy in the morning and sleepy at night. Joy lived among 27 other llamas, all nestled in a rolling hills behind a dilapidated barn with peeling yellow paint. She knew that other llamas were known for their feisty nature, or their carefree frolicking, or their pushy playfulness...
Tim woke from a dream, the echoes of childhood taunting lingering in the fogginess of just waking confusion. Tim cringed thinking of the chants directed towards him, embarrassed by his name and his stature and his missing spikes. Instead of making him shy and withdrawn later on in life, the taunts and jokes from his youth just made him angry and crabby. He felt betrayed by his parents who, in naming him Timothy after his great grandfather, had made him a prime target for teasing in verse by his other much larger and more spiky contemporaries. If a cartoon was ever made of tiny Tim’s life, surely smoke would be seen billowing out of his upper opening and his typically purply black spines would turn a ferocious shade of red....
Sheldon looked in the mirror and smiled wide. Then closed his mouth and pursed his lips. He ran his tongue against the back of his teeth until that last front tooth wobbled against the pressure. He rocked the tooth back and forth with the tip of his tongue and then opened his mouth up and watched it wiggle with ease. He took a comb to his hair, pursed his lips one last time and turned from the mirror, ready to start the day...
To be a rock in the middle of a forest of tall trees is easy. That is, it is easy if you are a rock with no feelings, little desire for light, and an acceptance of never moving far from your roots. It just so happens that Barrie was this type of rock...
Tilda lived in a hot, stuffy, and sometimes dark room. It was noisy too—not in a crash-bang-boom way but in the steady, sturdy, unrelenting, white noise way. The noise and the heat came from the corner of the damp, windowless room where a hot water heater rumbled constantly to make sure family upstairs was warm, clean and cozy in their home...
Bernie always wondered what was so special about number two pencils that they were the chosen ones for filling out the little bubbles of the many standardized tests awaiting him at school. He knew it had something to do with the lead and the scanning machines but he was not a pencil person and he didn’t know if it was the tests that he hated or the fact of having to use a pencil...
Alice was a button with no purpose. At least that’s how she felt. Her destiny wasn’t for some elegant ballgown or a powerful businessman’s shirt cuff. It wasn’t for the casual Hawaiian button up or a warm winter jacket, or even decorative like on some scarves or hats or sweaters that she didn’t know existed. Alice was a plain jane, white, four holed, plastic backup button. She was the kind that was rejected for everyday use and packed away into a small plastic bag, attached to the inside tag of a garment...
Jason was born in Illinois in the winter. It was cold, dark and loud when he was born. The whirring of a huge machine threading steel wire to form nails was the first thing Jason experienced as he himself was spit from its mouth and moved along a conveyor belt to be dipped into a protective chemical coating. A huge magnet sorted and packed him into a box with other nails his size. He spent quite some time wedged neatly in the dark of that box, his head alined carefully next to the others...
Know your farmer. I moved from market to market around New York City and Brooklyn, eying radishes in the Spring, indulging in fresh eggs, sampling honey and loading my bag with apples in the Fall. I loved food, but I loved eating more. And I loved losing myself in the freshness of the farmers’ fine offerings. I liked knowing who my dollar went to and liked the feeling of eating things that I could tell came from the ground. But it wasn’t enough...
Teddy found hibernation to be quite boring. He felt it was contrary to his own natural tendencies, which were to plan and project and move forward. Teddy liked the idea of crawling into a cave and putting his head down, but with the intention of productivity not rest. He could never see how wasting away month after month in a deep slumber made sense...